Columnist Mike Smyth writes about the aftermath of last week's bombshell money-laundering report. Has it knocked Rich Coleman out of the race for Surrey mayor?

Rich Coleman admits the deposed Liberal government could have done a much better job stopping money-laundering in B.C. casinos.

But the former top cop for the province bristles at suggestions he “turned a blind eye” to casino crime. And he insists last week’s bombshell money-laundering report will not stop him running for mayor of Surrey, something he’s still considering.

“I am not soft on crime,” Coleman said in his first comments since the release of a damning report, entitled “Dirty Money,” by former RCMP deputy commissioner Peter German.

The report detailed more than a decade of ineffective provincial oversight of gambling operations, during which international criminals targeted B.C. casinos to launder proceeds of crime.

German estimated $100 million of ill-gotten loot may have sloshed through B.C. casinos, drawing withering criticism from crusading NDP Attorney General David Eby.

Coleman, a former RCMP officer, admitted the Liberals could have done better.

“I’ve never seen a perfect government and we weren’t perfect,” he said. “But it wasn’t a question of anyone being complicit or turning a blind eye to anything. Everything we did was in the best interests of the public.”

Coleman was solicitor general in 2002 when the Liberals brought in a new Gaming Control Act that German said got bogged down in red tape and jurisdictional turf wars.

As suspected money-laundering ramped up, Coleman said he was limited in what he could tell police to do about it.

“Can you tell the police how to do an investigation? No, you can’t. You can set the direction. You can follow up on the direction.”

The former government took heat for shutting down the Integrated Illegal Gaming Enforcement Team in 2009, but Coleman said that was done on the advice of the police.

“They had trouble staffing it up and keeping good people there, so they never built the expertise,” he said. “The chiefs of police wrote me and said, ‘You should eliminate this and merge it into the organized-crime investigation group,’ which we did.”

Looking back, Coleman said he could have done a better job making the gambling unit more effective.

“Maybe I could have been more forceful about the staffing-up of the unit,” he said. “But I was also relying on the professionals to tell me where the funding was needed, because I was not going to tell them how to investigate.”

Coleman also pushed back against a section of the report that commented on his actions after an RCMP officer spoke out publicly about suspected casino money laundering.

“The common person would say this stinks,” Baxter said. Coleman publicly criticized Baxter’s comments and Baxter was later “cautioned” by his superiors.

“Baxter’s remarks would be the last public comment by an RCMP officer on any matter related to B.C. casinos for a number of years,” German wrote in his report.

Coleman denied that he muzzled the RCMP.

“I don’t recall doing that,” Coleman said, though he admitted he also complained internally about the officer’s comments.

“There was a conversation about ‘Can we be factual here? If you’ve got that information, if there’s something going on, why aren’t you guys investigating?’”

NDP critic Ravi Kahlon said the officer’s experience shows Coleman and the Liberals “ignored” warnings by the police that criminals were using the province’s casinos to launder drug money.

“For Rich Coleman to say he didn’t muzzle the police at the same time he’s complaining publicly and privately about an officer’s comments to the media is outrageous,” Kahlon said.

“For him to say he’s not soft on crime given what’s in this report is ridiculous. British Columbia developed a reputation for corruption across Canada and around the world under the Liberals’ watch.”

Coleman, though, said he couldn’t directly order the police to investigate casino crime.

“We built an act that deliberately kept the minister at arm’s length,” he said.

He said the Liberals’ gambling legislation deliberately kept law-enforcement decisions away from the minister responsible after the previous NDP government of the 1990s got into trouble.

“In the 1990s, there were difficulties with the gaming file, too,” he said, referring to earlier gambling scandals that brought down former NDP premiers Mike Harcourt and Glen Clark.

He said the Liberal government was making progress on the problem after setting up a new illegal-gambling police unit in 2016 with an expanded budget of $4.6 million.

“We had to improve and we started to improve,” he said, though he said FINTRAC, the federal anti-money-laundering agency, also came up short.

“Casinos were filing reports about suspicious cash transactions to FINTRAC and FINTRAC wasn’t following up,” Coleman said, repeating a complaint Eby has also made.

“That’s something a provincial government has no power over. That was a challenge.”

But Coleman also admitted the Liberals came up short.

“We could have done a better job,” he said, calling the German report “fair and balanced” while deflecting Eby’s harsh criticism.

“They’re blaming us for a lot more things that we should be blamed for,” he said. “That’s politics. But it’s legitimate to have criticism of us, and we have to accept the fact that we need to improve.”

As for municipal politics, Coleman said the damaging money-laundering report has not knocked him out of the race to become the next mayor of Surrey.

“I’m considering it, but I haven’t made a decision,” he said, adding a bid for the mayor’s chair would focus on public safety and affordability for taxpayers.

“The gun violence we have seen in the city is very disturbing,” he said about recent shootings.

On affordability, he slammed the new 1.5-cents-a-litre gas tax approved by regional mayors, including outgoing Mayor Linda Hepner.

“It’s not fair,” he said. “A lot of people who live south of the Fraser River have to drive to work. They don’t have a reasonable transit option. They’re being punished.”

He said he will decide whether to run for mayor within the next two weeks.

I got the distinct impression the brutal money-laundering report has made his decision a lot tougher.

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